EDITOUR PETplanet Insider Vol. 23 No. 12/22 www.petpla.net 10 Spanish state-of-the-art PET packaging service Always in tune with the times by Heike Fischer The next part of our Editour starts in the north-east of Spain. 230 km from Barcelona, heading northwest, the Editourmobile reaches the Spanish province of Huesca, which belongs to the autonomous community of Aragon. Our destination is the Comarca of Somontano de Barbastro, with the district capital of the same name, Barbastro. In this small town of about 17,000 inhabitants, the history of the place is as vivid as its corporate culture. The Novapet company plant is located in the south of the city. We are warmly welcomed by Ana Chéliz, Marketing Manager at Novapet, and David González, General Manager of Novapet. Tour Sponsors: When we enter the company premises, we cannot yet guess the dimensions of this impressive production site. In the air-conditioned office, a commodity not to be underestimated in the Spanish summer, David starts directly with some details: “Novapet was founded in 1996 and belongs to the Samca Group. It started with a production of 30,000 t of bottle grade PET resin per year. The polymerisation plant was expanded in two steps with TechnipFMC Zimmer + SSP from Polymetrix technology. Today, we have a capacity of 260,000 t PET resin per year. After successive expansions of our injection plant since 2016, we produce 75,000 t of preforms a year.” After these impressive figures, David continues: “We are always in close contact with the bottlers and can therefore react quickly to demand. We don’t just produce standard PET resins, our special motivation is the challenge, the special. We are market oriented, accomplished to manage packaging supply chain, in direct contact and together with fast-moving consumer goods producers,” he emphasises. Production side But enough of dry figures, Ana and David take us on a tour of the factory. As we put on our protective clothing and reach the entrance to the production hall, we pass a small showroom. Novapet produces more than 30 different types of PET resins. “We want to meet the needs of our customers and are in close and continuous contact during a project,” David adds. The company offers its customers rapid prototyping and pilot production, as well as special contracts to ease the price risk management. An important service in times like these. In the anteroom of the production hall, we meet Carlos Álvarez, who is responsible for the management and control of the industrial injection moulding area. From a viewing platform, he proudly explains his machinery to us: in total we see 15 injection moulding machines. On the right, the red lettering PET on a blue and white machine catches our eye. Here are five Netstal PET Lines plus nine Husky-HyPET machines with clamping forces from 3,500 to 6,000 kN. “We get our moulds from Husky, MHT and Otto Hofstetter. We work with moulds up to 96 cavities from 10 to 98 g. A wide range of configurations, wall thicknesses, colours or weights etc. are possible, of course this is based on the customer’s needs. We have maximum flexibility thanks to the interchangeability of the moulds and direct production monitoring with absolute process control in real time. One special feature is our software Shotscope, which is dedicated for monitoring and controlling the number of cycles and ensuring the perforF.l.t.r.: David González, General Manger Novapet, Heike Fischer & Kay Barton, editors at PETplanet, in front of the Editourmobil at Novapet plant in Barbastro, Spain. Novapet is equipped with 9 Husky machines: 1 GL300, 3 HyPET 300, 2 HyPET 300HPP, 1 HyPET 400HPP, 1 HyPET 3005e+, 1 HyPET 4005e+ and 1 pilot line HyPET90 RS45/38. Further we see 3 PET-Line 3500/3550, 1 PET-Line 3500/6600 and 1 PET-Line 4000/6000 from Netstal.
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